Finally… my boulder wall

Rongy recently downsized his woodie and in late November offered me three panels plus the frames.  I found out that these panels and frames originally came from the Mountain Design shop in Bunbury, so I was inheriting a little slice of SW climbing history.  Lisa asked how long I thought it would take and I said to give me time and it may take 3-6 month all up:

I have toyed with the idea of building a wall many times and always decided not to bother.  There are several people who have them and it seemed extravagant to build my own.  But once the ball was rolling things kinda got bigger and a week into December I had designed the wall and bought the additional material needed:

I started to clear out the shed and had in mind to use a sixth of the floor space, taking advantage of the portion that had a sliding door opening onto the garden.  It was pretty exciting but I had to control my enthusiasm and wait till I had some time to get stuck into it:

Luckily I had a couple of weeks off over Christmas and New Year’s.  So on my first weekend off Craig came over and we had a huge twelve hour day in which we smashed out heaps of the wall.  He has all the tools and toys to make a job like this less painfully and both more efficient and professional:

I proposed to have a roof, vertical wall and the overhang and all of it needed to be framed up.  While it was secured to the shed frame I wanted to have access to the back of the walls, in case of bad t-nuts or worse.  So we built it with that in mind, which made it a tad more complex:

We got a heap done but there was still more framing to make, boards to cut to size and of course none of the new boards had been drilled or had t-nuts placed.  I wasn’t however in a rush and we were pretty chuffed with how far we had manage to get.  I couldn’t resist an image of Nicka who came to check out the progress and was rewarded with a nice blue streak from the chalk line:

Over the next week and build up to Christmas, I was off work.  That meant at 6am when Lisa had ducked out to F45 I snuck into the shed and stayed there for 4-6 hrs each day.  The frame and panels were soon ready, and I found drilling the holes and fitting the t-nuts was relatively painless due to using screw in t-nuts:

As you can see above I went to painstaking levels to make sure when I cut the roof panels they were the right size.  That included plumb-lining the top edge of the overhang, as the pre-made frames I had received were not quite the same dimensions.  Then just two sleeps before Christmas Craig came over to help get the roof panels up and then all that I needed were the holds:

Australia post teased me a bit and indicated they wouldn’t get here till the New Year.  Then that changed and they would arrive before New Year’s, with five out of eight boxes arriving on the Thursday and the last three due to get here on the Friday.  Only problem was that when I went to get the last three the post office was closed:

It was back to work after New Year’s so despite the holds having been collected on the Tuesday, I waited till today to place them so Craig could help out.  It felt like it’d be more fun setting it up together and also I knew he was pretty excited about it.  I placed the first hold at 8am, and it had to be the one that Elseya encouraged me to buy:

We had a bit of a scare when we realised that I had not been provided enough long bolts.  Luckily Geoff had a few spare and came over to drop them off.  He then promptly stayed and helped finish off the wall, while Lisa kept us going with tea and coffee supplies:

At midday and 200’ish holds later I was given the privilege of placing the last hold.  There were times of wondering if I had got enough holds and then whether I had possibly got too many, but it worked out about right:

So after telling Lisa it may take 3-6 moths, it only took just over a month.  With the wall complete it seemed crazy not to give it a go, and Elseya was the first to jump on and of course go for the biggest and best hold.  We then set about having a general muck about:

We played the traditional follow on game and while Craig and I ventured out onto the roof, that really didn’t get as much attention as the other walls.  Just like at Lou’s wall we seem to have an issue with dogs wanting to lounge about on the mattresses below where you are climbing:

Even Lisa put her sticky boots on, and that is a very rare occurrence.  After a while some were getting tired and left Craig and I to have a quick bash at some of the routes we had set.  Some were easier than expected and others were pretty desperate, but overall we agreed it’s pretty good:

So who fancies coming over for a boulder sometime?